At the traditional annual award ceremony, which was held in the Central Hall at the Glyptotek on 6 March 2024, the New Carlsberg Foundation presented grants to five artists who have made, and continue to make, exceptional contributions to the Danish art scene. The New Carlsberg Foundation’s Artist Grants 2024 went to the artists Ahmad Siyar Qasimi, Fryd Frydendahl, Goodiepal, Kirsten Christensen and Tabita Rezaire. Each artist receives a grant of 400,000 kroner.
‘The five award recipients all represent unique expressions in their respective generations, and each in their way, their artistic practices have a defining impact on their fields,’ says Christine Buhl Andersen, chairperson of the New Carlsberg Foundation. ‘They also represent the enormous and impressive diversity on the Danish art scene today. The New Carlsberg Foundation’s board is united in our assessment that these five artists, with everything they stand for, paint a strong picture of Danish art in 2024.’
One of the topics of the chairperson’s welcome address at the award ceremony, which had 400 guests in attendance, was diversity – a key focus of the foundation’s new grant strategy.
‘Specifically, this concerns which voices should be heard and who should be represented. The focus is on gatekeeping, privilege and the competition for power and funding. As well as, not least, the language we use and how we address the topics of identity, art and culture, in which communities of experience and by what right. Relevance and diversity are thus key concerns in the New Carlsberg Foundation’s new strategy, which was announced at last year’s award ceremony, and which we have been working to implement ever since,’ said chairperson Christine Buhl Andersen in her welcome address at the event.
Learn more about the five awards recipients here
The New Carlsberg Foundation’s Artist Grant is given to one or more artists who stand out with an artistic practice characterized by courage, originality and impact, both in Denmark and abroad. Below, some key points from the board’s motivations for choosing this year’s recipients:
Ahmad Siyar Qasimi
Visual artist Ahmad Siyar Qasimi (b. 1986) shows exceptional awareness of the unfathomable impact of the flood of images we are increasingly subjected to. In a new and empathic approach, his artistic practice revolves around this insight and engages in a living dialogue with art history as he reorganizes the traditional figurative painting, which captures a moment in time, by shifting his focus from figure to phenomenon. Thus, his works refer both to art history and to a bleak reality few of us are willing or able to acknowledge. His works explore the undefinable area between beautiful and tragic, exploring a fluid distinction between joy, fear and fiction. Watch a film about Ahmad Siyar Qasimi here.
Fryd Frydendahl
Art photographer Fryd Frydendahl’s (b. 1984) photos of life are not accidental snapshots. She carefully stages and plans her images, and yet, the character of her works spring from a unique moment, a tiny movement or a special gaze. That takes a special, precise and well-honed artistic eye for the value of the moment. Fryd Frydendahl’s pictures reflect her sensuous way of relating to the world and its objects, materials and people. Whether the effect is amusing, playful or touching, this sense of focused presence is a crucial quality of Fryd Frydendahl’s work. She is awarded the New Carlsberg Foundation’s Artist Grant for photographic works which represent an artistic practice that has already inspired others and for taking photographic art in Denmark to a new place. Watch a film about Fryd Frydendahl here.
Goodiepal
Throughout Kristian Bjørn Vester’s (b. 1974) life as an artist, which involves painting, hacking, sound art and new compositions, his alter ego Goodiepal has challenged habitual thinking. With his activist art, Goodiepal questions human conventions and institutional constructs, such as economics, rules and the notion of nationality. Goodiepal began his career as a young teen with a well-worn Commodore Amiga and a hunger to explore the new digital intelligence of the 1980s. Since then, he has continued to explore the new world that developed between man and machine. He is honoured with the New Carlsberg Foundation’s Artist Grant because his art compels us to take a stand and demonstrates that it is possible to see art with our ears. Watch a film about Goodiepal here.
Kirsten Christensen
Kirsten Christensen (b. 1943) had her breakthrough with the solo exhibition Min Mor og Mig (My Mother and Me) in 1978. Punk had recently landed in Denmark, and she arrived on the scene with a similar energy. However, Kirsten Christensen’s youth rebellion was about hoisting and unfurling the flag of elderly people. This project, which she later revisited, contains social realism and critique as well as utopian ideas. Kirsten Christensen took part in the large exhibition After the Silence at SMK – National Gallery of Denmark in 2021. In 2023, she held a large retrospective exhibition at Holstebro Kunstmuseum (Holstebro Art Museum) to mark her 80th birthday. Her most recent drawings almost seem even more intense than her previous works, with explosions of colour that send the viewer out to join her, deep in outer space, dangling among the planets. Watch a film about Kirsten Christensen here.
Tabita Rezaire
Tabita Rezaire (b. 1989) entered the art world at a young age and was quick to make her own path. At times, this path has taken her away from the art world; at other times deeper into it. She has performed at the Centre Pompidou, MoMA, New York, and Tate Modern, exhibited at Palais de Tokyo and ICA and presented works at SMK – National Gallery of Denmark, ARoS and Arken while also cocurating the exhibition The Birthkeeper Altar at the small venue Collega in Copenhagen’s Vesterbro district. She runs AMAKABA in French Guyana: an organic cocoa orchard, a centre for indigenous knowledge and an astronomical observatory. French-Danish Tabita Rezaire grew up in France, studied in Copenhagen and London, spent several years living in South Africa and is now based in French Guyana. Watch a film about Tabita Rezaire here.